Malcolm Moore is the Telegraph's Shanghai Correspondent. He arrived in China in July 2008 after three years in Italy as the Telegraph's Rome Correspondent. Before that, he was the paper's Economics Correspondent.

Journalists get assaulted in Sichuan

Tuesday is the one-year anniversary of the earthquake that claimed more than 86,000 lives.

And on the eve of the anniversary, after a year of pressure from the public, and from high-profile Chinese bloggers such as Ai Weiwei, the designer of the Bird's Nest Olympic stadium, the government has finally released the number of schoolchildren who died.

They say it is 5,335.

The children died after their schools collapsed on top of them. Their parents say the schools were badly built because corrupt local officials stole the construction budget. The tragedy continues to provoke huge anger and resentment, especially since there has been no investigation.

I visited Dujiangyan Middle School in April and it had fallen to pieces even though ancient rickety buildings were still standing all around it.

Off-the-record, officials are willing to admit that badly-constructed schools caused the unnecessary deaths of many children. But the official line is still that it was the force of the quake, rather than the bad construction, that led to the collapse of several school buildings.

Ahead of the anniversary, the authorities are now making it as difficult as possible for reporters to travel in Sichuan and find out how people are coping. When I visited last month (for this magazine piece), it was already getting tricky to speak to people, as I recorded in this blog.

(On the right, some "officials" who stopped me speaking to the villagers on the left)

Shortly after I left the region, the local authorities ruled that journalists had to apply for separate permits for different counties, making the bureaucratic hurdle more difficult to navigate.

Now the Foreign Correspondents' Club of China has noted that several journalists have been physically attacked in Sichuan while trying to speak to victims or the parents of dead children.

"Nobody has been hurt but equipment has been broken. Given the violence of the encounters and an apparent increasing frequency of reports, it seems the situation is becoming more volatile and we advise extra caution when visiting these areas," the club said.

Jamil Anderlini, one of the FT's Beijing correspondents, was attacked while trying to interview one outspoken couple. He recorded the whole thing on video.

This is not unusual, of course, and most journalists working in China have seen similar scenes. But it sours the display of openness that was evident in the wake of the earthquake. That media openness resulted in a wave of emotion, public support and – most importantly – donations from around the world.

The British Red Cross told me that British donors had given Â£3 million in aid – a significant sum given how little most people in the UK know about Sichuan and how little sympathy we have for the Chinese government.

By contrast, the victims of Cyclone Nargis in Burma have seen aid donations dry up because the junta would not allow any media coverage of the suffering. Without being able to know what was going on, and how serious the situation was, donors around the world were not pushed to put their hands in their pockets.

At the time of the earthquake, many people said China had learned some lessons about trust and how constructive an open approach can be. But judging from the speech given by the Sichuan propaganda chief in response to the latest accusations, things have not changed at all.

Why are journalists being intimidated? Because they are trying to spread revolt, he said.

The other fear I have about Tuesday is that the day will not commemorate the victims of the earthquake as much as the Chinese response to the disaster. And while the Chinese rescue and rebuilding efforts have been truly impressive, the anniversary should not be about self-congratulation but about mourning those who lost their lives.

The best way to do that would be to allow parents who lost their children to grieve in whatever way they wish and to carry out a public investigation into why their children died.